The Table By The Door

💧More rain again last night. 

Just a quarter inch but it was a gentle soaker and it arrived overnight, keeping the soil moist for hours.

The arrangement of pots on top of and around the table looks good. There's a cascading effect as everything has grown in. 

The visual composition is nice with the tall blue door framing the fall of blooms next to it.

But I keep thinking I'd like a simpler look. It feels fussy.

Maybe move the metal scroll trellis next to the garage door and make it the focal point as you look down the yard?

It's hidden behind the redbud, although it fills the blank wall, especially when the redbud's leaves are down.

If I moved it over by the garage door, I'd grow a Major Wheeler honeysuckle on it. The one I have below the railroad ties is lovely but in too much shade to bloom well or fill out.

I'd keep the new little cardinal penstemon in front -- the honeysuckle needs something to hide its bottom bare stems, although that would be a red flowering vine + red flowering penstemon together, too much? I'd keep the blue container of deep purple bush clematis at the foot of the trellis as well.

But the trellis is rusted out and there is only one prong to set in the soil, the other is propped up with a haphazard pile of stones and a brick. 

That supporting mess is shielded by the thick sumacs, but would be visible right at the garage stoop. 

So I don't know. . .  

The composition at the door seems too busy, and yet I keep saying I want a lush, complex, mixed garden look.

The redbud needs to get some height to rise up above all the pots and the sumacs below. That will help, so everything isn't at the same level.

Ehh, I don't think the trellis will work all that well. 

It's okay where it is, and is surprisingly stable even though it's precariously balanced among rocks.

Cumulus Clouds

This summer we've had such unsettled weather with plenty of rain. Wow. 

But the thunderstorms that pop up in the afternoons aren't the violent kind we've gotten in other summers. Mostly they deliver a bit of noise and flash and a steady soaking rain. 

Gray and black clouds hang over the mountains often.

But this week there have been the most incredible cumulus clouds billowing up over us. Everywhere I looked there were giant poufs of marshmallow white. 

The skies looked unreal, like an overly exaggerated painting of a western sky dwarfing all below. The sky was brilliant blue, the clouds dazzling white, the shadows in the folds deep silver.

No real storms, just giant cottony ballooning puffs. What a summer.

Dining Room Window Garden

Planting under the cottonwood tree on the east side of the house was probably a mistake. The cottonwood sucks up all the water, smothers plants in dropped leaves and it's been hard to get anything going with the root competition.

But those windows dominate the whole east side of the house and they are positioned low, so the ground level area under the cottonwood is visible from inside the whole length of the dining room and den.

So I planted.

Now, in late summer, the ground is getting covered with early leaf drop. Later there will be way, way more.

The groundcover plumbagos at the front of the garden and the rock swale are completely smothered.

This should be the plumbagos' season. They should be visible, thickly massed, deep green with vivid blue flowers. Other patches in other gardens look lovely now.

Mine have light green foliage, a few sparse flowers and are not really visible at all. And it is still summer really.

The tall Woods rose at the back stands up above the mess of leaves and the taller plants like the Texas betony and Icicle veronicas are vertical enough to still be seen among the leaf litter.

But I should probably do something about the plumbagos.

I originally wanted this garden to be a shrubbery with greenery and texture, not really a flower garden. 

I still do, but getting shrubs going in the root competition wasn't working. The shallower perennials took. At least some did.

The plumbagos have been spreading over the years, but like all my plants, the individual clumps don't touch, don't mass together. They are nice enough edging the rock ditch, but I have seen such rich looking groundcovers elsewhere, and this patch doesn't look like much.

I guess at a minimum I need to get the blower out and regularly blow the area clean. So many more leaves to fall, though . . . 

Thyme Does Not Creep

The creeping thyme under the white bowl has not spread one bit this year. It's green and healthy, but not filling in any bare spots where I had removed perennials last fall. 

Perennials got overrun by the creeping thyme

When I had tried to grow perennials -- blanketflowers, sages and blackeyed susans, obedient plants, dwarf agastaches -- in the carpet of thyme surrounding the birdbath, they failed. 

The thyme overwhelmed each, growing right over each little emerging perennial every spring. The creeping thyme completely choked everything out.

So I removed the plants, letting the thyme spread where it will.

But.

No action at all this year. I replaced the birdbath with the white bowl. I watered in the bare spots all summer, added compost, encouraged it. It hasn't spread anywhere all summer, not even an inch.

All summer it has looked healthy but has not spread

Why did it spread so quickly and aggressively before but has stopped at its existing boundaries this year? I'm puzzled.

Rose of Sharon Needs "K"

August 2022

Ever since the big Spanish broom was removed in 2021, the Rose of Sharon that had been strangled behind it has done better and better. 

I pruned it way back in the winter of 2022, and it formed a nice shape and bloomed pretty well the following summer. Here it was in August 2022. →

Actually it bloomed okay even hidden behind the broom with little sun. In 2018 it was badly affected with aphids, but since 2019 it has been getting a winter soil drench from Coates and aphids have not been a problem. 

in mid August 2020

← It bloomed pretty fully in 2020 as it reached out from behind the Spanish broom to find some sun.

But now, four years after clearing out the broom, the Rose of Sharon continues to have a nice shape but just isn't blooming much. 

In August it had flowers and buds but they seem scattered oddly and sparsely. Pretty enough, but nowhere near as densely flowered as other Rose of Sharons I see, and not even as flowery as it has been in the past.

What's going on? Same issue with the butterfly bushes this year.

August 16, 2025

I gave it extra water all spring and summer and a couple applications of 2-8-4 fertilizer when I watered. It has irrigation emitters.

But somewhere I read the following:

Many flowering plants prefer plentiful phosphorus -- the middle number in the N-P-K ratio -- but Rose of Sharon and its hibiscus relatives favor potassium (the K) instead. 

Citrus & Avocado fertilizers of 5-3-4 are formulated to provide greater potassium, and hibiscus needs iron and magnesium too.

The leaves are not chlorotic, but inability to take up iron is an issue in my soil. And I guess I needed to use a citrus fertilizer or something with higher potassium?

The individual flowers look nice. A close up shows that. I've inspected for insect damage, but all the buds and flowers look fine.

There just aren't very many of them.

A Tour Around the Circle

I've liked a lot about my garden this year, and the wet monsoon season has helped. But I still struggle with getting "the look" I want for the circle around the white bowl. While some things are filling in and I need to be patient, other plants are just too tidy by nature. I want a looser, less structured appearance.

Let's take a tour around the circle ----

• Take out this small clumpy sage (Blue Profusion) and pot it up for somewhere. Replace it with Black Adder agastche, which is larger and loose and spiky (divide the Black Adder agastache in the pot by the deck). Have this

• Add another blue mealycup sage to this little group of 3. Need to buy

The red Mexican sage between the two will get large

• Add one or two more orange agastaches to make a bigger stand with the others in this spot. Need to buy

These orange agastaches struggled and may bulk up next year, but add more

• Divide the tickseed in the terra cotta bowl and put one between the grass and the tiny dwarf purple agastache. Have this

• Bulk up the tiny sulphur buckwheat and the little Electric blue penstemon by adding more of each to form a grouping of each. Need to buy

• Unpot the Widwalker Red sage and put it where the annual gomphrena is (next year grow gromphrena in a pot and put that by the deck.) Have the sage / Need to buy the gomphrena

This is the most unresolved part of the circle, needing more plants and the bigger sage

I like the idea of mixed plants all around the circle, but need a much less restrained composition. As I've complained before, all my plants shrivel and none touch. By planting multiples together I hope to get the look I'd like while waiting for some growth and fullness to emerge. Maybe?

And Another

Another rain event last night -- this time not the hard downpour and no kitchen flooding, but a drenching rain that delivered .75 inches.

That makes 2.25 inches over the last two nights. That's a lot.

This morning is gloomy, wet smelling and cold. All my plants look full and upright and perky but I worry they are getting too soggy now.

What a monsoon season this has been!

A Hard Rain

The last rain we got was a third of an inch on August 1, and the month has been so dry since. Lots of clouds rolling in and storms all around almost every day, but no rain for over three weeks.

So I went out and watered last night even though big threatening clouds surrounded us and, as usual, the mountains were getting rain but none down here in the basin.

And then right after I came in it rained. Hard.

A real downpour that flooded the kitchen and totaled an inch and a half overnight.

I mopped the kitchen and turned the irrigation off.

1½ inches from one big storm is very rare here. This summer's monsoon season has been an intermittently wet one. Lots of rain, but not spread out consistently. Since May we've had 8.5 inches of rain, the most ever since we moved here.

These Things Are Nice

Despite my laments about skimpy plants and sparse flowering of some things this summer, there are some nice sights to see too.

The Mexican sage, just planted this year, has started to fill in and the first blooms are vibrant red.

Salvia darcyi Vermillion Bluffs - newly planted this year

The second year for a little dwarf goldenrod is looking good. Not sure how big it will get, but it is filling in somewhat and blooming well.

Solidago Little Lemon

A purple agastache in a container by the deck is great. It has been blooming all summer on upright stems  along with the yellow tickseed nearby. I did cut the agastache back by a third in June before any flower spikes had appeared.

Agastache Black Adder

The whole grouping of containers by the deck looks nice and the wild hairy goldenaster is even starting to bloom, flopping into and around all the other plants.

My Prairie Pot Garden

So there are sights that please me in some places!

This Summer's Lament

This summer was a wet one for months. August has been drier, but monsoon season started early and was generous. BUT . . . I lament. Things don't look right in my garden this year.

The butterfly bush is so scrawny -- both the purple one in the corner and the Honeycomb in front. It blooms at the top but it had a lot of dead stems this spring that I had to cut out and although I like the upright vase shape, it's too sparse and thin. 

A short walk around the neighborhood revealed caryopteris shrubs that were dense with flowers and butterfly bushes that were fat and full of blooms.

Not mine                                                                       Mine

I'll do rejuvenation pruning this winter and cut it all the way back. And my Rose of Sharon, leafy and green, has fewer buds and sparse flowers this summer. The similar one in Newman's parking lot was immensely, spectacularly full in July.

Nothing in my gardens touches. The veronicas and geums and zinnias are all stunted. They grow, they look healthy, they are fertilized and well watered, but they are tiny. The pretty gaura withered and produced long arching flower-less stems. You can't even see it here, somewhere next to the sundial.

Could these plants be tinier?

By the way, here it was last year. The gaura was pretty and bobbing and just isn't anywhere to be seen this year. What is wrong this year?

Last year looked so much fuller

In the ring that circles the white bowl, well irrigated, watered, and fertilized every 10 days, I have 3 inch plants. All of them, just three inches across and two inches tall, stranded in mulch, some new but most well into their second or third year. What is going on with my perennials shrinking?

Lots of tiny stunted things in the mulch

A row of blanketflowers between the bench and the white irises never made it past three inches of healthy looking foliage. 

No show blanketflowers

I planted some new Amber Wheels blanketflowers and there are some of the older aristata gaillardias, but none of them did anything.

I don't fertilize those, as they grow best without amendments or inputs, and I made sure they weren't watered too much. 

But nada -- all of them just produced some nice green short foliage and sat there.

Blanketflowers are supposed to be the easiest of all, needing no care. What happened? I grew them around the birdbath in earlier years and they were tall and dramatic flowers.

(The white irises behind the blanketflowers had nice foliage but only two or three flowers this year. The year before I got a full stand of crystal white irises.)

There are some successes in my garden: the Grow-Lo sumacs thrive and have gotten big, the crabapple is leafy and getting bigger. My yellow peony is a nice size, the Karl Foerster grasses under the kitchen window are tall but very thin, and the rosemary is too big for its spot. 

This is as big as the clematis gets each year
(after seven years)

Other things look nice enough, although nothing is big or full. My pots are okay, but no plant that I have put in the ground touches another next to it. All stay safely apart even if a robust nursery plant has to shrink to three inches wide to prevent touching. 

Clematis vines produce about six or seven flowers but stay delicate and skinny and about three feet tall. The plants under the Venosa violacae don't touch -- I've added some potted things in between.

This summer seemed a godsend with the rain, but I am baffled about plant size. And not just a struggler or two, but mature easy to grow shrubs and reliable perennials just look so skimpy.

Next year I will try using higher nitrogen fertilizer rather than bloom booster fertilizer. I'll cut the butterfly bushes and caryopteris plant way down. 

I don't know what else to do.